


Rites

by EllenD



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Death, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, New Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-02-03 01:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1726229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenD/pseuds/EllenD
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock dies in a Klingon attack and it's Jim's duty to return him to New Vulcan to be interred in the way of his people, even if he finds the Vulcan funeral rituals to be intolerable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rites

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: no profit being made, work created purely for the purposes of fanfiction. Please note that there is slight squick involving dead bodies, but not too graphic.

Jim’s voice is tense as he barks out, “Lieutenant, status report.”

“Green across the board, Captain,” Sulu says tersely. “Deflector shields are holding. Proceeding at warp six.” After a pause that lasts a heartbeat, comes the tentative non-question, “Sir… Mr. Spock, is he…?”

“Man your post, Mister,” Jim grinds out, the words nearly cutting his teeth as they passed. One hand death-gripped the edge of his armrest while the other moved to punch in the call to Engineering. “Mr. Scott, status report.”

“She’s had quite a beating from those Klingon ships sir, but she’ll hold,” Scotty’s voice crackles over the intercom.

“Weapons department, report.”

“All clear, Captain.”

“Transporter room…”

One by one, he goes through the divisions and subdivisions of his ship. They all come up clean. Sickbay is last, and he almost can’t bear to patch the call. He hesitates for a second, just a second, before thumbing the intercom.

“Bones, what’ve we got?”

The doctor sounds gruffer than usual, which means he’s exhausted. “We’re triaging the wounded. Hendorff and Kyle are still in the regen pod, but it looks like they’ll pull through. No further casualties since my last report, thank God.” A pause, then his voice softens. “Jim… I have the Commander in stasis. Best we get him to his family soon.”

“Understood. Kirk out.”

It hurts to swallow on a dry throat, but he manages, so he can give the orders he needs to.

His face remains stony for the rest of the mission. He pulls the duties of both Captain and Science Officer. He is stoic. He sits straight-backed in his captain’s chair, revealing nothing.

He tries, and almost succeeds, to not think about Spock, his First Officer, his brother-in-arms, his lover and _t’hy’la_ , and how his body is lying in a stasis field in Sickbay so the _meat_ (and isn’t that what everyone eventually becomes? _Meat?_ ) wouldn’t decompose before they reach New Vulcan.

He wants to scream in grief. He wants to be sick. He wants to take the _Enterprise_ and all her weapons and wreak terrible vengeance on those responsible. He does none of these things, doesn’t even allow himself the luxury to entertain the thought for more than a second. He carries on, as Spock would want him to.

X

New Vulcan envelopes Jim in dry, comforting heat when they bring Spock home to his family. What’s left of his family, anyway.

The grief on Sarek’s usually impassive face is terrible to see, as startling and deep as the jagged wound that killed his son. Jim wonders if it’s a kindness that Amanda is dead.

“My son,” Sarek says simply. His hand hovers over the distortion of the stasis field. Beneath it lies Spock, on an anti-grav gurney, eyes closed and arms at his sides, still in the uniform he was killed in. Sarek doesn’t touch him, or the gurney, and he withdraws his hand to cover his own face. He utters one cry, an animalistic, guttural moan that the dry desert wind quickly swallows up.

When he looks up again at Jim and Dr. McCoy, he is calm. Somehow, Jim is shamed to his core at this calmness.

If only he was quicker. If only he was stronger. If only he was more merciless, then perhaps, Spock would be….

“Thank you,” Sarek addresses them both. “For bringing him home.”

McCoy responds in Vulcan, with a Southern accent, no less, and the sound of it surprises Jim into a smile. It’s a testament to Bones’ affection for Spock, that no matter how much they bickered at each other, the doctor considered Spock enough of a friend to learn his language and culture.

They escort Spock to the Vulcan equivalent of a funeral parlor, more of a temple really, with Jim and McCoy flanking Spock like two guards.

“The funeral is tomorrow,” says Sarek. “He will be cremated and his ashes will be scattered across the desert, in the way of our people.” His eyes follow Spock as he is transferred onto a stone slab, the stasis field still surrounding him humming lightly in the stillness of their allotted chamber.

Jim’s mind is blank as he processes Sarek’s words. Cremated? Scattered to the wind? Nothing left? No tomb, no memory, no evidence that he ever belonged to this world? To Jim?

“Barbaric,” McCoy mutters out the side of his mouth.

Sarek either doesn’t hear him, or chooses to ignore him. His hand hovers over Spock’s forehead again. “No _katra_ ,” he whispers. “No one to carry his essence. He is truly gone.”

No, there wasn’t time, Jim thinks. Spock died suddenly, and alone.

“The priestesses will begin their work at dawn,” says Sarek. Jim catches sight of two gloved and robed figures waiting tactfully at the door, and he nearly recoils at the thought of a stranger touching Spock, of foreign hands handling the body he loved.

“In the meantime,” Sarek continues, but Jim is barely listening. “You are both welcome to stay at my home if you prefer it over returning to your ship.”

The guest room at Sarek’s still half-built house is sparse but comfortable, though they have to share a bed. McCoy snores lightly next to him  throughout the night, but sleep eludes Jim.

He clutches the light woven fabric of the blankets and thinks of Spock lying next to him, arms folded atop his stomach, prim and proper even in sleep. He thinks of elegant fingers coaxing music out of his lyre, small smile gracing those lips when no one but Jim is watching. He thinks of the time they had as colleagues, then the time they had as friends, then as lovers, their relationship blooming like their first kisses, hesitant at first but then growing stronger and stronger in intensity.

He draws up memory after memory, imagining if he could make them real enough in his mind, Spock would step out of the world of dreams and into life again.

It’s approximately an hour before dawn before Jim slips out of Sarek’s house and heads westward of the planet’s rotation. The sand looks black in the dark, and the temple looms over him like a black tomb when he arrives. The stone halls have a haunted feel to them and Jim shivers as he makes his way through.

There is still one lamp burning for Spock. The stasis field shimmers like water under the light, giving Spock a drowned look. The rest of the room is shadows.

The undertaker’s tools are laid out in a row on a table. Jim examines them with a wary eye, guessing each one’s approximate function. The thought of an uncaring, fish-eyed Vulcan priestess bringing these instruments upon Spock’s body nearly chokes him and the small sob he releases echoes through the chamber like a ghostly wail.

He reaches out, hesitates, pulls back, then reaches out again to flip off the generator that keeps Spock in stasis. The filmy, watery barrier disappears.

If he squints, if he blurs his eyesight just right, he can imagine that Spock is simply sleeping. The flicker of the lamp makes it seem like he’s moving slightly, shifting and breathing. The more Jim looks, the more convinced he allows himself to become, because how could Spock, such a beloved constant in his life, be dead? It’s illogical, unthinkable.

“Hey,” Jim breathes. He reaches out and touches Spock’s forehead, unimpeded, the way Sarek obviously longed to do before. He brushes aside the wayward bangs, touches the tip of an eyebrow, the way he sometimes did on a lazy morning when he watched Spock sleep.

“You’ve been asleep for a while now,” Jim whispers. He smiles gently. “It’s ok. Sleep. You need the rest.”

Jim turns his attention to the undertaker’s tools and after a moment’s study, chooses a pair of silver shears.

“Don’t worry about the ship’s reports. I’ve been managing pretty well, actually, and I stuck Chekov with some of your science officer’s duties. We’ll have full write-ups for you when you wake up.”

The scissors cut their way up Spock’s stained tunic, parting it from hem to neck. It looks black instead of the usual cool blue. Jim carefully works his way around the collar and sleeves, until all the fabric is snipped off.

A basin nearby holds a sweet-smelling, oily wash with a medicinal tang. Jim chooses a palm-sized sponge from the table and dips it, watching it expand and saturate with the liquid.

“I missed you,” he whispers, as he washes Spock’s body. Face, neck, collarbone, both arms and ten fingers, all the way down to the tips. “I know it’s only been a few days, but I want you back on the bridge with me as soon as possible. Besides,” he chuckles, “you’re missing all the quality gossip that goes on during Beta shift.”

His hand trembles when he reaches the wound. A burnt, jagged tear that goes halfway through Spock’s abdomen.

“Hey,” he soothes. “It’s not so bad. I mean, it’s a good thing Bones got to you when he did, but it’s not so bad.”

He washes the wound carefully, almost reverently, and ever so gently as to not tear away any scorched skin.

“It’ll probably scar, just a little, but I know you’ve never been vain. And I love every part of you, so don’t get the cosmetic treatment for my sake, ok?”

He takes the can of organic biofoam off the table and watches through tear-filmed eyes as he injects the foam into Spock’s body cavity, filling the jagged wound, plumping up the body where it had previously been sunken and empty. He watches the foam bind to the surrounding skin, then turn from white to a warm flesh color. His hand is inexpert, and it comes out a little sloppy, a little lumpy.

He throws away the empty can, and unbuttons Spock’s uniform trousers. As he did with the torso, he washes Spock’s hips, genitals, and legs, and without any disgust or shame, wipes away the discharge between Spock’s buttocks where he soiled himself.  

“You’re beautiful,” Jim whispers. “I know, I know. It’s illogical to keep praising you for a ‘purely subjective trait, especially one that is determined by genetic makeup rather than virtue or labor.’ Hah. The fact is, I just can’t say it enough. You’re beautiful, body and soul.”

He finishes the washing and dries Spock with a towel that had been warming by the lamp. There’s a small pot of something that smells like flowers and feels like Vaseline, and Jim applies it liberally to Spock’s skin, which had taken on a dry, papery feel. The lotion warms him up, smooths him out, gives him a light, pinkish sheen.

He doesn’t touch any of the other instruments, the syringes and knives and sewing needs, shuddering at the thought.

“I love you,” Jim whispers, taking a limp hand, massaging it against the clamp of rigor mortis. He opens his mouth to say more, but instead just kisses Spock’s lips for the last time. The lamp is nearly extinguished by now, and in the cold morning light, there is no longer any pretending that Spock is only sleeping.

The kiss is his last goodbye.

Sarek finds him eventually, kneeling by Spock’s body, head buried in his arms. The room smells of death and fire smoke and sickly-sweet oil.

“Captain,” he says in a dead-sounding voice.

At once, Jim rises. He expects Sarek to be furious, appalled. In the light of day, Jim himself is appalled at his actions, at the mess he probably made. Though, truth be told, he is not sorry. Not even at his own flagrant disregard of another species’ culture, or the dread of his next mental evaluation.

No, he _is_ sorry. But he does not regret it.

But the Vulcan only looks old, and tired, and sad, and there is no reproach in his eyes.

Jim opens his mouth to speak, finds he cannot, then closes his mouth again.

The priestesses who came with Sarek wear matching cold looks of distaste as they survey Jim’s handiwork, but he fancies they look more professionally offended than appalled, as if they are insulted that they couldn’t be trusted to do their jobs.

“Only the members of a Vulcan’s family or the priestesses themselves are permitted to give him the Final Rites,” Sarek says.

“I’m sorry,” Jim says brokenly.

“Do not be.”

Jim looks up, surprised.

“You are, are you not, a member of my house? You were joined with Spock, as closely as if in marriage, were you not?”

“You knew?” Jim whispers.

Sarek nods once, and there is acceptance in his eyes. “Yes.”

Jim touches Sarek’s shoulder with a shaking hand, out of desperation rather than affection, and is surprised when Sarek crushes him into a hug. Against the scratchy embroidery of Vulcan robes, Jim cries properly for the first time, sobbing into Sarek’s chest all his grief, his loss, his anger, and finally, _finally_ , feels it all bleeding away, leaving him drained and sleepy as a child.

“My son,” Sarek says simply, and it takes Jim a moment to realize that Sarek is addressing _him_. “We must leave them to their work.”

He is led to Sarek’s house, where he falls into bed amidst Bones’ worried grumblings, drinks a steaming, spicy-sweet cup of Vulcan tea, and sleeps for hours.

Later, Jim, McCoy, Sarek, and what must be half of New Vulcan arrive to see Spock given to the wind. The rest of the _Enterprise_ crew, though the entirety of them wanted to attend, had not been permitted. Jim knows a separate service will be held aboard the ship.

“A good turnout,” McCoy comments, looking at the throng of Vulcans solemnly assembled.

“My son was much respected by his people,” says Sarek. “More than he knew or expected, I think.”

When Sarek, as Head of House, lifts the urn and scatters Spock’s ashes, Jim feels that part of himself is being scattered too, and lost forever. But as the wind catches the particles that used to be his lover and raises Spock higher and higher into the sky, then spreads him wider and wider across the sunbaked earth of New Vulcan, Jim feels his heart lighten. It’s as if Spock surrounds him now, envelops him like the breeze.

He touches McCoy’s shoulder, who had his head lowered, probably in prayer.

The doctor looks up at him. “You gonna be alright, Jim?”

“You know what, Bones?” says Jim, a small smile finally spreading across his face. “I think I will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! My first experiment focusing on character death. Please let me know what you think.


End file.
